The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1887-11-09
The Southern Field.

tinues to receive honors at the hands
of southern citizens which they deny
to men who have always been loyal to
the Union. OF more serious impor-
lance, however, is the defence of Sc
cession and of the southern view of
state sovereignty and the laudation of
treason made by General Henry Jack
son of Georgia the other day. In de-
scribing the march of confederate prin-
ciples to final triumph, he said: " In
that triumphal procession Abraham
Lincoln shall not move as the rightful
president, but Jefferson Davis, the So
lost cause" This might be treated SIM
ply as an emotional and sentimental
utterance, called forth by the occasion
and signifying nothing of much mo-
ment, were it not for the fact that it
expresses the sentiment of many south
ern democratic leaders and too large a
portion of the southern people. The
effect of such speeches must be to con-
vince the northern people that the
roseate views of democratic and mug
wump writers concerning the state of
public sentiment in the South are
illusory. Such speeches are productive
of bad results to the democratic party,
but are very serviceable to the repub-
licans. For all that we regret that the
southern people should continue, as for
the last twenty-seven years, to be their
own worst enemies.
We are further reminded of the fact
that there is still southern question
by the occasional utterances of infu-
entail southern democratic journals
upon another subject of vast impor-
lance to the nation. This is the sup
preston of free ballot in the South
by violence and fraud. The New Or
leans TimeS-Democrat has given notice
that federal interference in southern
elections will not be tolerated, and that
"the white people of Louisiana have
declared for white rule and are de-
termined that the state shall not go
back to negro government, or fall into
the hands of those who do not fully
recognize the necessity for white SUI
premacy." We are to understand from
this that if majority of voters in
Louisiana are republicans and choose
to elect colored men to fill the offices
the democratic minority will not submit
to the result. The white democrats
will take good care that this contin-
gency does not happen, for they will
contrive to suppress enough of the re-
publican vote to carry the elections.
What is true of the political situation
Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South
Carolina. The bourbon element in
these states have so successfully car
ried out their determination that white
men alone shall have the right of suf-
frage that large percentage of the
voting population remain away from
the polls. Thus in the state of Georgia,
in 1886, out of voting population of
1852 900 ten democratic members of con-
gress were elected by total vote of
26,520. Only one man in every thir-
teen voted for congressman! The
states we have named have forty mem
bers of congress and there is not re-
publican among them! There is no
more reason for denying that white
supremacy" in these states has been
secured by the repeated and systematic
suppression of the colored republican
vote, and that by the same means the
democrats have elected president and
a majority of the national house of rep.
resentatives, than there is for doubling
any well-attested fact in our recent
political history.
The country is expected to submit to
this great usurpation, for we are told
by northern dough-faces that there i:
no practical remedy for this condition
of affairs. To say nothing of the fact
that the republican party is defraudet
of its control of the national admins
tration and the lower house of con.
gress, the methods of fraud and VIC
lence used by the white democrats OF
the six southern states we have named
to perpetuate their political powe
must be demoralizing to themselves
The men who resort to frauds upon tn
ballot-boX to cheat the colored voter
will not stop there; they will commi
frauds to carry out their political pur
poses irrespective of the color of tn
voters. There is one remedy that
available to meet the situation, an
that is to refuse to continue the part
in power that profits by the crime o
suppressing a free ballot.
No Hope for the Anarchists.
The decision of the United State